Study Costs, Potential Jury Pools For Holding Trials In South County

The nearly decade-long campaign to begin conducting jury trials at the South Palm Beach County Courthouse in Delray Beach should take a small but promising step in the Florida Legislature this week.

Sen. Ron Klein, D-Boca Raton, has introduced legislation that would give the County Commission a key role in determining the feasibility of holding some jury trials at the courthouse on West Atlantic Avenue that opened in 1989.

The original plan was to divide the court calendar between the main courthouse in downtown West Palm Beach and the South County Courthouse, which is much more accessible to the 40 percent of the county's population that lives south of Lantana Road. But nine years ago the Florida Supreme Court ruled that existing jury district boundaries created unrepresentative, racially discriminatory juries, placing the county in a Catch-22 situation.

State law permits counties to create new judicial districts, but the high court's decree that any subdistrict must reflect the racial composition of the county has effectively prevented commissioners from proceeding.

If Klein's bill becomes law, county commissioners would be able to initiate a study of the proposed change and then share authority with Chief Judge Walter Colbath for creating the new district. At present, the decision rests solely in the hands of the chief judge.

Colbath predicts a new South County district would be challenged in court the first time a defendant is convicted by a jury drawn from what could turn out to be a predominantly white jury pool. But he supports Klein's legislation on the grounds that ``if county government has to foot the bill, it should have a voice.''

Finding answers to the racial-balance and funding questions are appropriate assignments for a county-subsidized study. South County attorneys and residents' associations have long supported moving some jury trials to the nine-year-old courthouse that already is operating near its capacity with traffic, probate and family court cases.

Advocates believe many more South County residents, especially senior citizens, would be willing to serve as jurors if they didn't have to travel 30 miles or more to the courthouse in West Palm Beach.

Up until now, both sides of the debate have been at the disadvantage of not knowing how much it will cost to conduct a limited trial schedule in South County and how district boundaries might be drawn to provide representative jury pools. The proposed county study could supply those answers if only the Legislature will give the go-ahead.